To Change your Life

Give up what Doesn't Work

If you insist you are right, and someone else is wrong, this stops you looking at their perspective. Why would you waste time looking at something that you already know is wrong? When you know you are right, this prevents you learning anything new, which halts progress.

Increase your Understanding

The real way to enhance your personal power in the world is to stop your self sabotage and increase your understanding, your integrity, and your capacity for compassion.

But when you see someone else's perspective as wrong, then how can you know if it's worthwhile to investigate? You'll only know by investigating, which will increase your understanding. So be openminded and change your life - if in doubt, check it out!

To stop progressing is to start decaying, which starts when learning stops. Since progress - being able to do more with less - is crucial, being right is completely counterproductive. Yet being right is such a common disease...

Emotions

Consider how it feels when you argue - neither of you feel good. The most you feel is grim satisfaction, but this is not joy. The emotions that accompany being right or wrong highlight the lack of understanding and compassion. They often indicate you've adopted a belief with little or no investigation.

But without thinking critically, without integration, a belief can only be a free standing positionality with no solid foundation. You've delegated your thinking by accepting someone else's thinking, which is about as effective as delegating your exercise!

Since your lack of critical thinking means you cannot defend your stance rationally, you defend it emotionally. But emotional defenses do little to convince, to change your life you need to persuade instead.

When they understand why your stance is more effective than theirs, they are more likely to change their mind. Even if they don't immediately, they may do so later.

Write it down!

These concepts in this Change my Life series will increase your personal power and improve your life. Yet it's not enough just to know about them, you need to be able to use them. They become second nature when integrated into your being. So give them some energy, write them down.

Avoid thinking you know it all, don't get stuck in the misleading dichotomy of right or wrong. Authentically knowing these concepts gives you extra power, so be humble enough to learn, and hungry for the benefits learning brings. Just do it!

Update obsolete beliefs

To change how you feel internally, it works to invest time and energy in changing what you think, in changing any outdated beliefs.

Peace and joy result from knowing the truth, accepting what is, and understanding how things work. This requires internal change, which many people resist. Yet unless you change, how will you ever experience more peace, love, calm and joy in your life?

Food for Thought

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.